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By ROBERT MACKEY
When Sha Zukang, the most senior Chinese official at the United Nations, rose to make a toast to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon last week, his colleagues were no doubt aware of the fact that he has a history of making undiplomatic remarks.
In 2006, the former arms-control negotiatior memorably exploded in fury during a BBC radio interview when asked about comments from Donald Rumsfeld, which were critical of China’s military build-up. Mr Sha shouted: “Why blame China? No, forget it. It’s high time to shut up! Don’t preach to China. I’m sorry because I’m being not diplomatic… but I feel very strongly about it! You know, we don’t have any soldiers abroad! We are not killing anyone!” He added, “It is the U.S.’s sovereign right to do whatever they deem good for them, but don’t tell us what is good for China!”
Last year, while chairing a United Nations meeting, Mr. Sha, the U.N.’sundersecretary general for economic and social affairs, vented his rage at people who did not sit quickly enough after he banged his gavel and then said, “sorry for this, I know I’m not pleasing — I’m offending everyone,” before adding, “I don’t care, at all.”
Still, as Colum Lynch reported on Foreign Policy magazine’s Turtle Bay blog on Thursday, even coming from “China’s John Bolton,” Mr. Sha’s words of faint praise for Mr. Ban last week gave his fellow diplomats pause.
“I know you never liked me Mr. Secretary-General — well, I never liked you, either,” Sha told Ban at a dinner attended by the U.N.’s top brass, according to a senior U.N. official who attended the event. “I didn’t want to come to New York. It was the last thing I wanted to do. But I’ve come to love the U.N. and I’m coming to admire some things about you.”
The blunt dinner remarks — which came after Sha had a few drinks — prompted U.N. officials to approach Sha and try to coax him into putting down the microphone, according to a U.N. spokesman and several U.N. sources who were there. It didn’t work. Sha continued a lengthy speech, in which he also expressed his antipathy toward the United States. “It was a tribute gone awry,” said a second senior U.N. official who was at the dinner. “It went on for about ten or fifteen minutes but it felt like an hour.”
Mr. Sha — who had prefaced his remarks by saying, the “wine affected me a little… I want to say something that’s on my mind” — also told Mr. Ban, “You’ve been trying to get rid of me. You can fire me anytime, you can fire me today.”
Before he relinquished the microphone, Mr. Sha added, of a senior American U.N. official, Bob Orr, “I really don’t like him: he’s an American and I really don’t like Americans.”
Mr. Lynch also reported that colleagues have said that Mr. Sha has “struggled to make the transition from an ardent Chinese nationalist to an impartial international civil servant.”
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